About Leila Zaki Chakravarti

Leila
Zaki Chakravarti is a Visiting Research Fellow in Anthropology at
Goldsmiths,
London University. Her recently
published monograph
exploring constructs of class, gender and religion within an
export-orientated garment manufacturing factory in Port Said, Egypt
was one of the three 2017 finalists in the BBC’s annual “Thinking
Allowed” Ethnography Award
competition. Her current research interests focus on constructs of
masculinity within the workspaces of professional and amateur
football, and the continuing compilation of ‘ethnographic
snapshots’
of daily life in post-Arab Spring Egypt.

The
Egyptian Government’s anti-terrorism measures
are causing subtle but significant shifts in Cairo’s vibrant
informal service sector - illustrated through the experiences of
one middle-class resident and her long-serving part-time cleaner. Read part one of this two-part article: The maid's story.

The Egyptian Government’s anti-terrorism measures are causing subtle but significant shifts in Cairo’s vibrant
informal service sector- illustrated through the experiences of
one middle-class resident and her long-serving part-time cleaner. Read part two of this two-part article: The madame's story.

Egypt’s
current political scene is marked by ’Sisi-mania’, as the new
leader’s supporters scramble to snap up the latest items of
Sisi-branded consumer kitsch. A gendered reading of this
‘patriotic consumerism’ reveals its role in negotiating
citizenship within Egypt’s refashioned political order.

As Egypt’s military-backed regime moves to further
consolidate its power, no spheres of civil society are free of state
encroachment. Leila Zaki Chakravarti
analyses the intricate
relationships between football, religion and politics in the settling of political scores in post-revolutionary Egypt.

Clearing
sites of mass protest in Cairo and stamping them with symbolic
representations of their preferred narrative of order and stability,
the military authorities are striving to relegate the revolution to the
past. Yet, these new cityscape makeovers continue to be
contested.

The
displays of masculine assertiveness by the football ultras in Egypt
and their strongly gendered form of youth activism points to the need to
look beyond clichés about unspecified notions of revolutionary youth.
Initially opposed to
state authorities, are the ultras refashioning themselves as new political players?

As the two cities
of Cairo and Port Said remain engulfed in the worst violence seen since the
Revolution, the entwining in Egypt of ‘football and the game of politics’ could
hardly be more complete. And the game, it would appear, has not even reached
half-time, says Leila Zaki Chakravarti.

As soon as Egypt’s first
democratically-elected Islamist leader moved into the Presidential
Palace, the surrounding streets became thronged by huge unruly crowds
waving petitions addressed to the new ruler. Alongside them appeared
an army of street vendors vigorously peddling their wares. Both forms
of street action represent
ways under the new political order for the disadvantaged to claim
social and economic redress for past neglect and injustice.

In the context of lax policing in the aftermath of the Arab spring,
Cairo’s affluent neighbourhoods have seen the incursion of new ‘street
entrepreneurs ’ from the city’s poorer areas and outskirts. Educated,
business-savvy and fleet of foot, they articulate a new sense of entitlement
that blends Tahrir Square’s calls for change with the ‘moral economy’ rhetoric
of Nasser’s original revolution

The
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces' call for an official inquiry into
football violence, following the deaths of 74 al-Ahly team supporters in
February this year, has been rejected by most clubs as a sham designed to
obscure the blame that belongs to the Mubarak regime’s structures which
orchestrated, and continue to orchestrate, violence.

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